time and again
by Qzil
Summary: We're all barreling toward the same apocalypse anyway. /Or, Hell has its own way of brainwashing.


_I wanted a break from silly AUs and it did not end well._

* * *

They meet for the first time just after the crucifixion. She wears a pock-faced peasant with rotting teeth, a far cry from the beautiful girls she will take and kill and shed. He wears a soldier with close cropped hair and dark eyes that doesn't suit him at all. His true form threatens to burst through the human skin, and she watches the sores bloom on his body and kiss the open air as they both stare up at the empty cross.

"Abomination."

"My father sent me," she says casually, picking at the peasant girl's nails. "Said we had to watch."

"My brothers said the same."

She drags him into an alley and presses him against the wall, lets him turn her around and hike the peasant girl's skirt up past her thighs and knows instinctively that he won't smite her.

"Isn't this a bit below you?" she chuckles.

"Not today," he answers, pressing his face into her neck.

.

"We're all working toward the same apocalypse, anyway," she tells him as they lie together in a field. A sheep bleats to their left and she sends it flying.

"Was the necessary?" he asks. She ignores him and watches the animal bleed onto the grass.

"Do you even have a name?"

"Castiel."

"Well, Castiel, your brothers haven't told you to smite your demon yet?"

"It would be counterproductive to the cause. Azazel and his children are still needed. Or so I've been told."

She rolls onto her side and runs her fingers over his naked chest. "The human vices?"

"They do not care, so long as I play my role in the apocalypse as it is written," he mumbles. "Do you have a name, or shall I continue to address you as Abomination?"

"I don't really have one." She shrugs. "Right now I'm wearing a Megara, so you could call me that." She picks at the grass and lets him run his fingers down her bare arm. "We're gonna win, you know. Lucifer will rise and he will take over."

"You're wrong. Heaven will win."

She rolls away from him and prepares to leave her body for a new one, craving someone bathed in luxury instead of the simple farmer's daughter she's chosen for this liaison. Castiel grabs her and turns her back around, his dark eyes boring into hers. Something soft and invisible strokes her cheek.

"I find I enjoy my time with you," he tells her. "When the battles start, I will regret having to kill you."

"That's sweet," she drawls, shrugging away from him. "But Hell will win, and I'll drag you down."

"Heaven will win," he insists. Castiel leans forward and nuzzles against her neck. "I will raise you up."

.

"It still doesn't matter," Castiel tells her.

"Have a grape," she says, ignoring him. She takes a sip of her wine and smiles. "Might as well enjoy all this while it's here. We'll be bringing Hell up soon."

"A few hundred years isn't soon by human standards," he points out.

She shrugs and swings herself up off the couch. "Let's go to the theater. We can possess whoever has the good boxes."

His eyebrows wrinkle in confusion. "You wish to see a play?"

"No, I want to have sex in one of the boxes," she answers, finishing the wine. "C'mon, angelface. Have a little fun."

.

"Angels are not supposed to feel," he says, running his borrowed hands over her stolen stomach. That's how he'd explained it to her early on; angels borrowed their vessels, asked nicely for entry and gave them back when they were finished. Demons took their bodies and shredded them, leaving the humans behind for dead on the way out.

"That's nice," she drawls, squirming. "Your point is?"

"I feel for you. Attachment."

"That's nice," she repeats. She hesitates for a moment, thinks of Azazel and Lucifer and the war and how they're supposed to be enemies. _Screw it_, she decides. _We're all barreling toward the same apocalypse, anyway. Might as well enjoy the ride._ "I'd be a little pissed if you died and left me, too."

His eyebrows wrinkle in confusion. She kisses him softly and lets Castiel wrap his wings around her, invisible and warm and soft and safe.

"I meant what I said. Heaven will win, but I will raise you," he tells her. Meg smirks.

"Hell will," she repeats. "I'll take you down and make you mine."

.

It isn't love, not really.

Azazel drags her down for it, anyway.

"I'm doing this because I love you," he tells her as she screams. "We're family, darling. Sleeping with the enemy could get you killed, and I wouldn't want that, not for my precious daughter."

She screams and sobs and tells her father she is sorry until he digs his knife into her vocal chords and she can no longer speak. "Scream all you want. Your angel won't hear you, and if he does, he doesn't care."

Azazel cuts into her and the memories fade. The crucifixion becomes hazy, tainted, until there is no dirty alley or a clean-shaven soldier boy nuzzling against her neck. There are no sheep or fields of grass or stars shining down as they move together toward human emotions and human feelings.

Azazel leaves her and her body pieces itself back together, the holes in her memory burning. She can almost feel his wings against her back, and when she closes her eyes she hears him saying her stolen human name against her flesh.

_Megara, Megara, Megara. _

Azazel comes back with another demon. They cut into her as one until it fades and she is nameless once again.

"He would never raise you," Azazel says. "He would never raise you, and you could never drag him down. _Lucifer _is the only angel that can raise you, and he will. He will raise us all."

She stays under her father and screams and sobs and begs forgiveness until she forgets Castiel and his promises and the feeling of wings against her cheek.

.

"Angels are nothing but trouble," Azazel tells her when they visit Earth again. "Remember that, daughter. They are the only thing that can kill us, and they will, without a second thought. You and I must stay alive to complete Lucifer's will."

"Aren't we all working toward the same apocalypse, anyway?" she asks. "Wouldn't it be easier if we all just stopped fighting and ignored each other until the final showdown?"

Azazel grabs her vessel by the throat and squeezes. "That sort of thinking gets you killed, my dear. They cannot be trusted." He releases his hold on her and she drops to her knees, coughing against the sand. "Does your new body have a name?"

Meg closes her eyes and shifts through the girl's memories. "Pearl. I like it."

For a moment she sees anger flash in her father's yellow eyes, but it fades as quickly as it came. "Fine. Pearl, then. You have work to do."

.

Standing in the middle of a slaughter, she finds an angel. He stares at her with wide eyes and she poises herself to run from him, to flee from her body with its yellow hair and cornflower blue eyes and find another vessel before he can smite her.

"I'm not going to kill you yet," he says, narrowing a pair of green eyes at her. "It is not time. Azazel and his children are still needed."

The words feel familiar to her and they cause her to drop out of her fighting stance. She walks toward him with lust from killing rushing through her stolen flesh and blood-soaked grass squishing between her bare toes.

"Someone told me angels are dangerous," she tells him, lining her stolen body up with his. "If you're not gonna kill me, what are you gonna do?"

Lust overrides her father's warnings as the angel pushes her onto the blood-soaked ground and tears her dress from her stolen body. She laughs and claws at his clothes in retaliation. "Isn't this a little low for one of you fluffy cloud-hoppers?"

"Not here, not today," he tells her. "I find myself drawn to you."

She sinks her teeth into his neck to urge him on and instinctively tries to keep his hands away from her forehead even as he moves inside her. Blood soaks into her back and she smears it over his shoulders where his wings would be, feels his grace pulsing under the fragile sheath of human flesh.

She knows that he could kill her with a touch and the thought pushes her over the edge. She trembles under him, boneless, while human feelings of pleasure and contentment settle in her stolen body.

He keeps moving as rain begins to pour.

.

Castiel finds her wherever she goes, in whatever vessel she takes. She keeps the name Pearl, partly for her father and partly for him. She ignores Azazel's warnings against angels as she bathes in human sin and human life.

She travels the globe and kills when Azazel tells her and relaxes when he has no assignments to further their cause. She finds beautiful dresses with beautiful girls in them and takes what she wishes, Castiel always one step behind her.

"We're all working toward the same apocalypse, anyway," he tells her when she asks why he doesn't just burn her out of her stolen body. Stroking her bare arm on some straw-stuffed mattress in the middle of nowhere, he closes his eyes and buries his face in her hair. "It doesn't matter. The world will end and Heaven will wind and your kind will be purged from existence. What happens between doesn't matter."

.

"Hell will win," she tells him next time they meet. She wears a girl with jet-black hair and scarring on her cheek. The words roll off her tongue, easy and familiar. "I kind of like having you around. I could drag you down with me when we win and make you my pet. My very own little angel. You'd look so pretty surrounded by Hellfire."

He growls and wraps one hand around her vessel's neck while he presses the other to her forehead. "You forget your place."

She laughs and presses closer to his hand. "Go on, angelface. You know you want to."

He leaves instead, and she stands alone on a beach with the saltwater rushing forward to burn her skin.

.

She goes through three different vessels before he finds her again, wearing a girl with butter-yellow hair and green eyes. She twirls a ringlet around her finger as she stares at him and grins. "Decided to come back, angel?"

"It will start soon," he tells her. "My brothers tell me that it is almost time to start putting everything in motion."

"Yeah, daddy told me the same thing." He moves closer and pulls her to his body. "What, you want one last hurrah?"

"When I see you next, I will destroy your kind," he tells her.

She rolls her eyes. "We haven't killed each other yet."

"Angels are not supposed to feel, but I find myself drawn to you," he says quietly. "I would be saddened if I were the one to end your life."

"It'd be a rush if I got to kill you."

She raises herself onto her toes and kisses him before he can speak. When she pulls away he stares at her with more intensity than before.

"Megara?"

"No, it's Pearl. At least until I find another name I like." He pulls away and holds her at arm's length. "What, is there another demon chick you're screwing?"

"You don't remember?" he asks softly.

She steps back, wary of him for the first time. "Remember what?"

He shakes his head. "When the final battle is over, I will raise you."

She snorts and smirks at him. "Hell's gonna win, angelface. But I meant what I said. I'll drag you down."

When he kisses her again it's soft, almost loving. She does not move away and indulges the way he moves over her almost like a human. When she tries to leave after, he wraps his wings around her and pins her to the featherbed. Wrapped in warmth, she feels something unfamiliar and almost human-like bloom in her chest.

"I have to go," she whispers. His wing relaxes over her, becomes heavier. "I mean it, Castiel."

"A few more minutes," he mutters. "This is the last time. Indulge me."

She opens her mouth to curse at him. "Just this once," she says instead.

When he finally lets her off the featherbed they dress in silence. He kisses her again. "I'll see you again at the apocalypse."

She does not face him. "I'll see you again in Hell."

.

Azazel finds out, anyway.

He catches her as soon as she leaves the room, digs his claws into her true form to pull her out of her stolen body and drags her down to Hell.

"I warned you, dear," he tells her as he ties her to his rack. "I should leave you down here. You already got a second chance."

"I don't understand," she screams as he drags a knife through her. "Father, please, I don't understand."

"You don't have to." Azazel pushes the knife deeper into her true form and leans down to kiss her forehead. "Just know that I'm doing this because I love you."

She screams under him and forgets the feeling of saltwater rushing over her ankles. He pushes his knife into her again and again until she forgets the feeling of blood soaking into her back while her angel pumped between her thighs, forgets the quiet rustling of a straw-stuffed mattress.

.

"Lucifer is the only angel you can trust, my dear," Azazel tells her. "Lucifer is your salvation. He is _our _salvation. Do not forget."

"I won't, I won't, _I won't_," she sobs. "Father, please. I won't."

"I know you won't," Azazel soothes. "You'll learn soon enough. Just remember that I'm doing this because I love you."

She screams as he digs into her again.

_I'll raise you. I'll raise you. I'll raise you._

"He lied, daughter. All the angels lie except for him. Only the lightbringer is different."

.

He remakes her until she cannot remember a time before Hell. Her memory begins and ends with her father and a blood-soaked rack, with razors and knives and chains.

"I did this because I love you," he tells her. "I made you perfect because you are my daughter."

He tells her of Lucifer and the apocalypse, of how their God will bring them all to Heaven and bring Hell to Earth. "You will be there to see it. You will be rewarded for your loyalty."

"Yes," she breathes.

He puts a razor in her hand and gives her to another demon. "Alastair will teach you what you need to know, my dear. There are things we need to put in place, and you will be needed. I've spoken with our father, and he has told me to find a special child. You will help guide him."

She smiles. "Of course, father."

.

"Meg?" Azazel asks when she comes to him in her new body, blonde and young and pretty.

"I like it," she says, fingering the red leather jacket. She frowns. "Dunno why, since it sounds kinda simple. Do you want me to pick a new one?"

Azazel shakes his head and frowns. "As long as you get your mission done, you can have any name you want."

She smiles. "Meg it is, then."

.

"We're gonna win," she whispers as he stands in a circle of holy fire. Something stops in her for a moment when she speaks. The words seem familiar on her tongue as she says them to the angel.

Something else in her sparks when he looks at her lips and pulls her closer. She leans up into his touch automatically, as if they've danced like this a thousand times before.

It is only when he throws her into the circle of holy fire that her father's words ring through her head.

_Lucifer is the only angel that can raise you. _

She screams and writhes in the flames until Lucifer does. He pulls her body from the fire and holds her close, pets her hair and shushes her like a child.

"Oh, my loyal girl, what has my brother done?" he whispers. Meg presses closer to her God and wishes for the feeling of wings wrapped around her, but doesn't dare to ask for more of his touch than he is willing to give.

"He will fall with the rest when we rise," Lucifer promises.

She lets him stroke her hair and pretends not to notice that he does not offer real affection in his touch.

.

He kisses her and she remembers.

She remembers another wall and another time and another woman with pock marks on her face and rotten teeth. She remembers how his true form struggled to be free of its vessel even as he pushed up her skirts with borrowed hands, lust from an execution running through her veins and grief through this.

She remembers lazy afternoons away from a shared war and wine and sex in a theater box. She remembers sheep and grapes and human feelings of attachment. She remembers wings wrapped around her naked flesh.

When he pulls away she stares at him and feels clean for the first time since Azazel pulled her down and remade her on his rack. She wants to tell him that she understands, that she remembers and she still feels that attachment.

Instead, she looks into his eyes and sees confusion instead of the affection she remembers from so long ago. Later, two states over and healing from her torture under Crowley's underling, she thinks that Heaven must have a screwed with his memories as well.

.

He remembers in the hospital.

"Megara?"

"Just Meg now," she tells him. "It used to be Pearl, too. Remember?"

"A little."

For a moment she lets her defenses fall and presses her forehead into his. "You never raised me."

"You never dragged me down."

"I forgot," she whispers. "You did, too."

He grips her arms and does not wrap his wings around her like he used to, but she can feel his grace pulsing underneath his human skin.

"Don't leave again. You were the only one who stayed."

"I won't," she lies.

.

He forgets their shared past as quickly as he remembers, shuffling between the years so fast she can't keep up. One moment he speaks about their meetings as though they happened yesterday, and the next his eyebrows draw together in confusion when she tries to fill in the holes in his stories.

"This reminds me of the first time we met," he tells her as they stand in the garden.

"The crucifixion," she grunts. "Guess not even Hell could erase something that big."

"I loved you, did you know?" he says casually. She stiffens and looks away from him. "Not that first time we met, but after, when you killed that sheep and we were together in that field. I did not know what it was called, at the time. Angels are not supposed to feel that."

"That time when I was Pearl…"

Castiel cuts her off. "They all mean the same thing. You've been picking the same name, over and over." He smiles at her. "Part of you remembered."

"We should go back in. The Winchesters will be here soon," she says, stopping all their talk about the past. "It's time to go back to the real world again."

.

"Hell doesn't win," she whispers as they watch the Winchesters sleep. Castiel looks at her with clear eyes for the first time since he woke up in the hospital. "Lucifer's gone so Hell doesn't win. But Heaven loses, too."

"Not yet," he tells her. "Heaven will win, in the end. We always will."

"Purgatory wins, in this case," she says. "The Leviathan. We all lose. Heaven. Hell. Humans."

"Heaven will win," he repeats. Castiel leans forward and she feels his wings wrap around her, pulling her in close. "I'll raise you."

Meg closes her eyes and rests her forehead against his shoulder, knowing what she's supposed to say, that she should repeat their old exchange. She presses close to him instead. _We're all barreling toward the same apocalypse anyway._

"I'll let you."


End file.
